Dispatches

Bob Schwartz is out to raise Arizona’s minimum wage. Or, more accurately, he’s trying to create one, since the state has no minimum wage of its own and relies instead on the federal standard, which has been stuck at $5.15 since 1997. Last summer the Tucson lawyer launched a campaign to collect 300,000 signatures to […]

In the summer of 2005, the director of the largest voter-mobilization organization that progressives have ever seen, sent e-mails out to most of its 30 staffers warning them that their paychecks would be cut off by the end of August. America Coming Together (ACT), the flagship progressive “527” organization, headed by former ALF-CIO political director […]

Rome — In this ancient city, just as in Washington, the origins of the infamous Niger yellowcake forgeries — the documents purporting to prove that Iraq was contracting to purchase vast quantities of uranium and cited by George W. Bush in his 2003 State of the Union address as a pretext for war — continue […]

Seemingly, divine providence has delivered the Democrats the perfect issue for 2006 — the epic Medicare prescription-drug screwup. Far from being an abstract (if grave) public issue like nuclear non-proliferation, this one hits up close and personal. If you don’t feel the drug debacle directly, you know about it from Mom or Grandpa. With its […]

“What, is Katherine Harris counting the ballots in there?” Several journalists shot out the same joke after flak emerged from the closed-door House Republican conference meeting to announce that more ballots than actual voters had been tallied in the February 2 election for majority leader. The snafu resonated uncomfortably in the air of corruption and […]

Throughout December, in a political offensive designed to recapture the initiative over the failing war in Iraq, President Bush portrayed the battle there in stark terms. Iraq, he said, is the central front in a global struggle against “Islamofascism,” against an enemy whose intent is to create a radical, worldwide caliphate comparable to the Nazi […]

On December 7, Rigoberto Alpizar, a 44-year-old man with a history of mental disorder, was killed, in a hail of bullets, by two air marshals at Miami International Airport. After the shooting, a Department of Homeland Security spokesman said that Alpizar had run forward in the cabin while the plane was on the runway, yelling […]

As the author of official memoranda seeking to justify torture, warrant-free wiretapping, detention without trial, and other expressions of lawless power, John Yoo appears to be enjoying his 15 minutes of infamy. Profiled in the mainstream press, lionized and vilified in the opinion media, Yoo is experiencing a burst of publicity that can only enhance […]

On its face, the corruption scandal involving California Congressman Randy “Duke” Cunningham, the former Vietnam War ace fighter pilot who pled guilty in November to accepting $2.4 million in bribes from defense contractors and others seeking his favors, would not seem to have the elements of a decent spy novel. As the story of a […]

Employers face new opposition in their efforts to rein in health-care spending, and it’s not coming from the employees whom they are forcing to foot more of the bill. Instead, employers are at odds with their allies in the conservative think-tank world, who are mounting an all-out offensive to unravel the employer-based insurance system, which […]